


Cupid's Chokehold (I Don't Know What Love Is)

by frenchpirate (Whiskey_n_speed)



Category: Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, F/M, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 09:35:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2224161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whiskey_n_speed/pseuds/frenchpirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mikey Way has the <i>worst</i> part time job ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cupid's Chokehold (I Don't Know What Love Is)

One of the biggest moments of Mikeys odd career was when Gerard had started glowing. Mikey hadn’t really believed it at first, after all his brother had only been in his mid-twenties and not the biggest Casanova in the state of New Jersey, but after a while it had been so strong that he just couldn’t ignore it anymore.

“You’re glowing,” Mikey had whispered one afternoon where they’d been at the movies, and Gerard had been shining so bright that Mikey hadn’t really been able to see the screen.

“Good one,” Gerard had just scoffed at him, because it wasn’t like Mikey hadn’t bullied him (gently, sort of) about it when they were teenagers. Whatever, he refused to carry some weird burden without some kind of benefits, and Gerard was an easy target, greasy hair and extreme nerdiness and everything.

“No I mean like, you’re _really_ glowing – I have no idea what happened in the last twenty minutes. I can’t see shit,” Mikey mumbled, trying to make Gerard understand that this time it was for real.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean, you idiot? I mean if I don’t do something about you soon you’re probably going to turn into like, the Sun Junior and eventually explode and then _I’ll_ have to scrape love-soaked Gerard-intestines of the walls,”

“You’re serious,” Gerard said with a concerned frown. That was why Mikey usually didn’t tell people when they were glowing. It gave them time to become horribly anxious, and he probably shouldn’t have told Gerard either since his brother was a twenty-six year old walking compression of teenage angst.

“Very,” Mikey nodded. “Do you want to go deal with it now?”

“Not really,”

Mikey knew that no matter when he asked his brother from now on, this would be the only answer he’d get, which was eventually why he reached over and grabbed his brothers neck under the cover of the darkness in the theater. That was probably the major downside to whatever it was that he was doing; skin contact was necessary, and it wasn’t always that people were up for that.

Gerard struggled a little, but when Mikey closed his eyes and started concentrating, feeling the well-known warmth soak through his body, starting in the hand that was currently inside the neckline of his brothers sweater, he calmed down.

When Mikey was done and opened his eyes, Gerard was staring at him with a look of utter panic.

“How do I know who it is?”

Mikey shrugged lazily. He always became kind of drowsy after his ‘sessions’.

“How would I know? I’ve never tried it. You probably like, sense it or something,”

“You’re a really shitty Cupid,” Gerard said and crossed his arms. Mikey was too tired to care, and spent the rest of the movie drifting in and out of sleep while Gerard elbowed him in the side now and then if he started snoring.

*

Mikey had always known he was special, even though he’d had no signs of it whatsoever throughout his entire life. He didn’t have pink, feathery wings or a ridiculous little bow with some heart-shaped arrows that he shot at people on the street, he didn’t have a list of names of people who were soulmates, and nothing had ever come to him to explain anything to him. It was simply just inborn thing that he’d always been aware of.

The only theory about it that he found remotely reasonable was that it was a completely normal thing, and some people just became these love-carrying Cupid-like beings, and it was just an aspect of nature that scientists hadn’t discovered yet.

In his own opinion, it was a pretty lame aspect of nature, because first of all being Cupid didn’t really pay his rent, and roaming the streets of Newark to touch glowing people wasn’t exactly his ideal spare time-activity. He’d probably stop if he could, but he didn’t want to live in a loveless and cold city either.

Of course he’d tried to just not do whatever it was that he did – generate the built-up love in the right direction or whatever – to see what would happen, but it just resulted in a lot of glowing people around him who was unaware of the fact that their significant others were right around the corner somewhere. And as it had happened with Gerard, they started glowing so strongly that it became annoying. So he did his duty and whenever he spotted someone glowing, he let his hand easily brush theirs in the line of the grocery store or 'accidentally' bumped into them at the bus stop, concentrated for a few seconds and watched as their glow slowly faded away. Even though it annoyed him greatly to be _chosen_.

This kind of ability would have suited Gerard much better. Gerard would have probably quitted his full-time job and lived on the street to just spend his entire life hunting down glowing people and give them the most romantic way of meeting their soulmates as possible. Gerard would’ve loved it. Mikey despised it.

*

“Is it supposed to feel like this? I’m pretty sure I’m about to vomit,” Gerard exclaimed as they were standing outside the small venue where Gerard was going to meet his date in ten.

“No, I’m pretty sure that’s just you,” Mikey said.

“Thanks for the support, asshole,”

“Hey, my job description doesn’t include carpooling dweebs around for their dates. I just do all the pre-work,” Mikey shrugged, and his brother sent him a very dissatisfied look, which was probably partly because of his nausea. Mikey clearly remembered Gerard throwing up in the hallway out of nervousness the first time he’d had gotten a date in high school, (neither of them had been glowing, so Mikey had known it wouldn’t last but he hadn’t really seen any reason to tell Gerard that).

“But I’m your _brother_ ,” Gerard said dramatically.

“And – that’s your date,” Mikey pointed at a tattooed guy crossing the street towards them. He was waving and smiling at Gerard who got too distracted by his presence to pay any more attention to Mikeys heartlessness, and Mikey saw it as his chance to escape and headed down the street to where he’d parked his car.

*

After that, Gerard started getting boring to hang out with because if he mostly had his entire face pressed into the screen of his phone, waiting for a text message from tattoo-dude (also named Frank, but the way Gerard said _Frankie_ with little hearts in his eyes made Mikey demonstratively continue to call him tattoo-dude).

So, Mikey started hanging out with the rest of his humble social circle which consisted of exactly three people. Weird enough, it doesn’t get you a lot of friends when you spend a lot of time going around touching strangers in the street, but whatever, Mikey liked the friends he had.

There was Alicia, who he’d gone to high school with back when she rocked a bass and he still saw a future between the strings of a guitar, and they’d played in a few bands together, had a lot of sex, and flunked chemistry together. Now she was engaged to someone Mikey didn’t really care about (and she hadn’t glowed yet so whatever, right), and they still hung out now and then and got in heated discussions about awful b-movies and talked shit about the local scene. All in all it was a truly beautiful friendship.

Gabe was a chapter to himself, even more than Alicia. They’d actually met in a bar once where Gabe had been glowing brighter than the flashing lights above them, and since it seemed like the only way to get skin contact with Gabe when semi-drunk in a club had been to either grind on him in the bathroom or make out with him, Mikey had made short work of him and done both. And then Gabe had fallen in love with some pretty bartender and all was good, and on top of it, Mikey even got a hand-job and a sleazy compliment with him on his way out. _That_ was an hourly wage that Mikey was willing to discuss.

The issue had been that the next time Mikey had accidentally run into Gabe, he’d been glowing again. And Mikey had done his job and made him fall in love with whoever it was, and then Gabe had started glowing again. And again. And again. And after a while they just started hanging out on a regular basis. Plus, besides the company, Mikey was kind of fascinated since Gabe seemed to be the only person who was able to generate that much love and throw it around so aimlessly.

The third friend he had was Pete. He was just this tan dude with a half-assed afro who worked at Blockbuster and commented on literally every movie that Mikey rented. Maybe it was kind of understandable though, since yeah okay, Mikey rented a lot of chick-flick movies, but sometimes it was just nice to see people fall in love all by themselves. As if that was a thing that happened in real life.

But Pete was cool, and Mikey kept him around because no one could cook a meaner Cabonara than him, especially when they were high (and they were that a lot), and besides he knew the bassline to literally every Alice In Chains song ever. Mikey liked that in people.

The only thing that sucked about not hanging out with his lovey-dovey wimp of a brother was that no one could really know about the whole lame-version-of-Cupid thing, Gerard had just figured out that something was up with Mikey on his own. It was partly because people would just think he was a freak (more than they already did, thank you), and partly because he felt like even if someone would actually go ahead and believe him, it was kind of a thing that he wasn’t supposed to share with anyone. So no matter how cool his friends were, he couldn’t really vent about the things that annoyed him the most when he was around them.

*

“One more hit and I’ll be smelling colors,” Pete was lying on his back, talking slowly and looking like his eyelids were 45 pounds. Each.

“Why would you not want to smell colors? I bet they smell awesome,” Mikey mumbled, reaching over and maneuvering the blunt out of Petes hand. It was quite a task in itself.

They were lying on Mikeys roof, looking up at the clouds slowly dragging themselves across the dull sky. The only upside to Mikeys shitty fifth-floor one-bedroom apartment was the fact that they could climb through the sloping window and out on the roof without being in severe life-danger.

“I think black smells like warm asphalt and liquorice,” He continued even though Pete didn’t really seem to pay attention. “White is cream and smoke.”

“Literally all of those smells are gross,”

“You’re gross,” Mikey said because he couldn’t really come up with any better response. It was true anyways. Mikey had heard from a semi-reliable source that Pete had once drank his own piss as a dare (the source was Pete himself, but he liked bragging and his memory was shit, so it wasn’t necessarily true), but even if he hadn’t, he’d probably do it without flinching.

“I’m going to get gross all _over you_ ,” Pete announced, then he sat up. Mikey smiled at him.

*

Mikey didn’t really know if it was normal to sleep with all your friends, but he had a kind of friends who didn’t seem to mind, so he didn’t see any reason to try and find out. And besides, since he didn’t have a manual to his weird power, nor a god-like boss who could instruct him in what he was supposed to do in various unique cases, he figured that he might as well do whatever he felt like.

After all, he didn’t really know if he was going to wake up glowing himself one morning, and what he was supposed to do in that case. It was kind of an unsettling thought, to have to generate his own built-up love in the right direction and just hope for the best. Maybe he kind of understood Gerards panic when he’d found out it was his turn.

On the other hand, it seemed kind of sucky too if he was just doomed to never fall in love and would just have to go around and watch other people unite with their soulmates for the rest of his life.

He was sitting in his bed with his back against the headboard, listening to Petes breathing and wondering if there was a third option that he hadn’t considered yet. It was a weird string of thoughts while coming down from being high. It was probably a weird string of thoughts anyways, but his life were also a weird string of events.

When Pete woke up he seemed confused and even more tired than he was before they laid down.

“Do you believe in like, higher powers ‘n destiny ‘n shit?” He asked, and Pete just stared at him with narrow eyes and his stupid hair sticking in every possible direction. He was probably the least elegant person after sleeping, ever.

“Dude, I literally woke up ten seconds ago,” He complained, but Mikey had spent the last forty five minutes thinking about all the directions his life could be on its way in, and he really didn’t care about Petes current brain capacity. Sometimes he felt like he was kind of a cold-hearted Cupid.

“Do you?”

“I don’t know, maybe,” Pete said and sounded like he really had no idea. “Why?”

“Let’s have sex again,”

“Demanding much, huh?” He grinned and shot an eyebrow all the way up towards his hairline, but none the less he rolled over and kissed Mikey.

*

Mikey wouldn’t call it ‘dropping subtle hints’, since he could probably straight up tell people that he was some kind of up-to-date Cupid that made people fall in love and they still wouldn’t believe him, so it was more like discreetly asking his friends on opinions on his secret part time job.

“Of course I believe in soulmates, I meet mine three times every week,” Gabe sounded like it was the most trivial thing to talk about when Mikey asked him later that week.

“Yeah, I know,” Mikey said, because he was kind of like a middle-man between Gabe and his crowd of temporary significant partners. It was hard to miss.

“Do you think everyone has one?”

“No,” Gabe replied honestly. “I mean like, some people are fifty and still rockin’ the single life big time. It probably depends on, y’know, what will make you happier in the long run. Which is why I _personally_ believe in polygamy.”

Mikey didn’t know if that was a reassuring answer or not, but none the less it made more sense than he’d expected from something that would come from Gabe.

Gerard said – at least he’d used to say it back in the days where he’d actually talk about other things than his boyfriend – the exact opposite. He was convinced that there was a person for everyone, even if you weren’t gonna meet them until you were seventy. Mikey could partly back that theory up, it wasn’t unusual that he’d see someone his grandma’s age glowing like there was no tomorrow, but then again there was no way he could get around to every person in New Jersey. Gerard was kind of old-fashioned like that.

Another thing was that he had no idea whether there were others like him or not. It was pretty unlikely that New Jersey was the only place where people actually fell in love, so he probably had some fellow burdened people all over the world. So maybe Gerard was right, and there was just another Cupid or two around Newark who took care of all the people that Mikey didn’t.

Sometimes that manual to being Cupid didn’t sound like such a bad idea.

*

“I’m standing _right here_ ,” Mikey complained, but his brother didn’t really seem to care.

“I see,” He just mumbled. Frank grinned up at him.

“Please stop groping you boyfriend, I need to talk to you,”

“I can multitask,” Gerard said, his hand resting steadily on Franks upper thigh. They were sitting next to each other on the bed and Mikey was standing in the doorway, letting his annoyance with his brothers sudden love-life shine through. “Just talk.”

“You’re like the fairy tale encyclopedia here. Do you think Cupid ever fell in love?” Mikey asked with a concerned expression, and he almost couldn’t blame Frank for the spluttering laugh that he couldn’t keep in.

“Dude, your brother’s mad weird,” He said to Gerard, which was probably correct to anyone who heard any of their conversations out of context. Mikey didn’t really care, he pretty much just wanted to get this over with and get out his brothers apartment so they could feel each other up without audience.

“I don’t remember anything like that, but like, fairytales are probably far from reality,” Gerard sounded thoughtful, and the look that Frank sent him made Mikey repress a smile.

“You guys are aware that like – fairytales aren’t _real_ ,” Frank said with a worried frown, and Mikey was thankful that Gerard for once didn’t immediately pay attention to him.

“Could you like, do the _thing_ to yourself in case there was someone you liked?”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Mikey shrugged. “I don’t get to decide who loves who, y’know.”

“True.”

“What the fuck are you two about?” Franks voice had gone remarkably higher. Gerard just reassuringly stroked his thigh. Mikey was really uncomfortable.

“Why?” Gerard demanded to know, and Mikey in a matter of moments got even more uncomfortable.

“I’m just wondering.”

*

He was utterly, completely and one hundred percent sure that he had, at some point, just been wondering. He spent a lot of time wondering, which anyone who’d been assigned unexplained supernatural powers at birth would be. It wasn’t anything unusual. It was just the aftermath of his brother falling in love that had started a stream of thoughts about whether or not that was going to happen to him someday.

Of course it could be Gabe who was right, and he was one of those people who was going to live happily ever after with a cat and a plant or whatever, and he just happened to be Cupid at the same time. Either that, or love just wasn’t available for people who worked with it. Just like doctors can’t pimp themselves with their own morphine. Or dealers can’t do their own drugs. Which they all, according to most of the people Mikey knew, did anyways. So maybe that was all the same.

He was lying effortlessly on top of Pete, post-orgasm drowsiness creeping up on him, kissing him with his eyes clothes. It amused him that the way he felt after making someone fall in love felt a bit like how he was feeling now. The only difference was that everything that happened up to that point.

Pete giggled quietly as Mikey accidentally kissed his nose instead of his mouth, even though it wasn’t Petes usual style to be quiet. He was actually one of the most loud and obnoxious people that Mikey knew, both when he was behind the counter at Blockbuster and kind of annoying, and when it was just the two of them and he was kind of nice, but Petes roommate was home for once.

He was this shy guy with glasses who was spending most of his time at the drop-in-center for troubled youth that he worked at. He was rarely there, but when he occasionally was, he’d politely asked Pete and Mikey to keep it down, which they usually weren’t very good at. And for whatever reason Pete had a soft spot for this guy that made him do most things his roommate wanted him to. But whatever, as long as Mikey got to lie on top of him until they got too hungry to not order takeaway and then make out, he didn’t really care how loud Pete laughed.

When he thought about it, they were maybe kind of dating, because they were sleeping with each other on a regular basis and they hung out a lot besides that anyways, and as far as Mikey knew neither of them really slept with anyone else (except for Mikey when he got drunk with Gabe, but that was like a chapter to itself because it was _Gabe_ ).

*

When spring came around people always started falling in love in hoards, and Mikey always got kind of hyperaware of everyone around him on the streets, especially when walking somewhere in the city around rush hour or going out at night and he couldn’t walk three feet before passing somewhere glowing. It was mostly because he really didn’t want to be known as the creep who touched every other stranger he came across. Sometimes it was really awful that it was only him who could see the glowing.

It was a blessing when Frank had to go to Europe for some music management business he was doing halfway through April, and Mikey got Gerard to himself for an entire week.

“You know Pete, right?” Mikey said one night where they were lying around at Gerards place, watching Dear John for probably the hundredth time.

“The sleazy guy that rented us this movie, right?”

“Yeah. I think I’m dating him,” Mikey stated kind of flatly.

“Oh,” Gerard uttered. “That’s, uh…”

“Yeah.”

Mikey had never really dated anyone before, which was probably why Gerard seemed to be kind of confused by it, probably because on one hand it was nice to be dating or whatever, but on the other hand when he had the cruel power to know whether people was in love or not, it could be kind of sad in the long run really.

“So are you like in – uh, do you like him?” Gerard asked, sounding mostly like an insecure fifth grader.

“Duh,” Mikey said and laughed dryly.

“But you don’t think that you-“

“No.”

*

Even when he knew that Pete wasn’t glowing and Mikey himself wasn’t either (in case he was even able to glow _and_ see it himself), it still didn’t make him less uneasy.

He’d never despised his abilities more than in the next few weeks where he spend most of his time in Petes bed (to his roommates great annoyance, which amused Mikey slightly), but it just wasn’t the same when it every other moment hit him that somehow this wasn’t right, no matter how nice it felt.

One thing that took him aback completely, was how tight his gut felt when he one morning woke up, turned over to flop on top of Pete and wake him up as well, and found a brief white light shining from his entire body.

The first thing he did, as his breath got quicker with something along the lines of nervousness was to get up and look in the mirror, only to find himself just as plain and un-shiny as he’d always been.

Now, he didn’t really know whether both people needed to glow to make it work; maybe it was only one person and then whenever he touched them and generated their love it just happened to the other person as well. There was also still unrequited love, so maybe people didn’t fall in love at the same time, but they just usually made it work and then the other person would fall in love later on. And maybe some people lived through lifelong marriages where one person was in love and the other one wasn’t but didn’t know. There was a lot of possibilities, and they all flashed through Mikeys mind as he stood there scrutinizing himself, while Pete slowly woke up and shot a confused glance his way.

“Why are you up?” He asked groggily, and Mikey quickly turned around. Petes light wasn’t shining very bright right now, but that would come later. For a moment, Mikey thought back to the day where he’d first noticed Gerard shining. It hadn’t been very bright either, but over the course of a few weeks it had become so much it was blinding.

“Dunno,” Mikey just mumbled, and crawled back to bed, kissing Pete with a bit more force than usual. His stomach felt upside down, but Pete didn’t seem to notice anything unusual.

*

Mikey took a few days off of work after that, turned off his phone completely and spent most of his wake time getting high out of his mind, lying around in his own apartment and contemplating his existence.

According to literally any person in the world who was above the age of seven years old, he didn’t exist, and in those days he didn’t really feel like it himself either. It was kind of surreal, he’d thought he was going to live his entire life passing by people in love and never be affected by it, have some meaningless sex, watch bad movies and work a lot.

And now Pete was there, all unaware of the chaos he was currently creating, because he was ready to fall in love with _someone,_ but Mikey had no idea if that someone was him or literally anyone else, because it wasn’t always that the people he made fall in love knew each other very well.

It annoyed him a lot, and it was a lot easier to deal with when he wasn’t in his right mind.

It was probably getting out of hand though, after four days without a single sober moment and he was sitting on the bathroom floor with his head against the wall opposite of the door. It was pounding on his front door in that particular way that only Gerard could master when he was worried, but Mikey were too tired to get up right now, and besides, Gerard would just walk in in a minute anyways.

“What do you think you’re doing?” His brother demanded to know when he found Mikey slouched against the tiles of the lower part of his bathroom.

“I’m just sittin’, man,” Mikey whined as Gerard went to pull him up in a standing position.

“You’re probably the worst fairy tale character I’ve ever seen,”

“That’s because I don’t fucking want to _be_ a fairytale character,” Mikey scoffed.

“Well, I didn’t want to be angsty and fat and greasy as a teenager but sometimes the world just sucks and you can’t just sit around and smoke pot to escape it,” Gerard explained harshly while Mikey just giggled.

“As far as I remember you spent a great deal of your teenage years doing exactly that,”

“And if I hadn’t stopped I’d probably still be angsty and fat and greasy,”

“The problem is just that my existence doesn’t really depend on my sobriety. Life is still gonna suck when I get down,” Mikey slurred a little, and yeah, maybe he was kind of a fucked up Cupid.

“I’m going to put you to bed, and then you’ve _got_ to go to work tomorrow. Both kinds of work,” Gerard said sternly.

“But Pete is glowing,” Mikey complained, and Gerards expression softened a little. Then a lot, and then he leaned forward and hugged Mikey tightly. “And I’m not.”

“But that doesn’t mean it can’t be, y’know, does it?” Gerard asked with an empathetic frown.

“It usually doesn’t. But I don’t think it’s for me, I think I’m like – out of the spectrum,” Mikey shrugged effortlessly.

Gerard sat with him for a while.

*

Of course Mikey knew that it would be really awful, unfair and extremely selfish of him to deny Pete falling in love just so he could keep him to himself for a little longer, but every time that he mentally made the decision to go ahead and generate Petes built-up love, it just didn’t happen.

When Mikey had slept and showered and eaten after his days of binge-smoking, he and Pete resumed their relationship as if nothing had happened. Mikey said he’d had a couple of bad days and had needed to be alone, and Pete just nodded and knew that it could happen to anyone.

The only difference was that now, Pete kept on glowing stronger and stronger, and besides it bothering Mikeys vision whenever he looked at Pete (which he did a lot – he was going to damn appreciate it while he could), it was also just a constant reminder that whatever it was that they had was drawing to a close.

He knew that soon the light emerging from Pete would be too strong for him to be around, and he’d have to help him sooner or later, but he figured that if he could wait until the last moment with Gerard, then he could with Pete as well. It didn’t seem like Pete noticed anything different about himself at least.

Mikey asked Gerard what it felt like to be in love, and Gerard told him that it mostly felt like having your thoughts revolve around one person for most of your time whether you like it or not, and a constant warm feeling in your gut as well as wanting to keep them closer than anyone else. Mikey didn’t know what he felt, but Gerard made it sound like it was supposed to feel good to be in love, and Mikey definitely didn’t feel good.

He also asked Gabe (not that he counted on a reasonable answer, but whatever) and he just shrugged and said he didn’t know, which was kind of stupid because Mikey witnessed Gabe falling in love every other instant, so he should know better than anyone.

Then he got kind of annoyed with Gabe because he was always beaming with love and Mikey wasn’t, so he went back to Petes place, where he spent almost all of his time by now, giving hell in work and other peoples love.

*

It happened in the middle of summer. Mikey had just arrived at Petes place, politely nodding at his roommate before stepping into Petes bedroom and being completely blinded by the light that was shining from Pete. He almost couldn’t see where Pete was due to the glowing, but he decided that he was probably lying on his bed as usual.

“I can’t stay for long,” Mikey said hesitantly. “They called from work and asked if I could come in, and I need the extra shift.”

It was a lie – he had the whole day off, and the next one too, but he couldn’t really bear to hang around as Pete had his major revelation regarding his love life, which Mikey most likely wasn’t a part of.

“Cool,” Pete just smiled and waved him closer. Mikey easily slid on top of his body, aligning all their limbs and soft spots and making it all feel way too comfortable and familiar.

When Pete pressed their mouths together, Mikey closed his eyes and felt how his stomach turned.

He put his hands on Petes neck, pushing on the skin slightly harder than usual, but nothing that Pete would notice, and then he started concentrating.

Pete was shining so bright that Mikey could almost sense it through his eyelids when the light started fading, and Mikey kissed him harshly for another while before breaking away and sitting up with his legs across Petes body.

“What?” Pete asked and looked up at him. It was unusually dark in the room, as Pete had been lighting it up for weeks now.

“Nothing, I just – I’m not feeling very well,” Mikey excused himself. “I should probably go, y’know, if I’m catching something I don’t want you to get it.”

“Uh, sure, okay. I’ll see you,” Pete said with a slight frown. Mikey was out the door again before he reached to say anything more.

*

He didn’t hear from Pete for a couple of days after that, which was only fair since he was probably in the middle of figuring all kinds of things out.

Mikey was hanging out with Alicia, he hadn’t seen her for a while due to her spending time with her fiancée and Mikey spending time with Pete. They would’ve usually watched a movie, but since Mikey refused to go down to Blockbuster for obvious reasons, they were sitting on her living room floor with a board game that they’d played in high school as well (or y’know, throwing board game pieces at each other and having sex on the floor, but in high school that was kind of the same thing).

He was kind of unprepared when his phone suddenly went off next to him, and Alicia told him to answer it with a wave of her hand.

“Hi,” Petes flat voice said on the other end of the line and Mikey sighed inaudibly.

“What’s up?” Mikey asked, trying to sound like he didn’t already know.

“We need to talk. Something happened,” He mumbled. He sounded ashamed.

“Yeah, okay,”

“Can we meet tomorrow?”

“Sure. I can drop by after work,” Mikey suggested, and from across the board Alicia sent him a look that expressed empathy but also slight confusion.

“That’s, uh – that’s not good. Let’s meet up instead,” Pete said evasively, and Mikey could almost see how he was pressing his eyes shut and with an uncomfortable expression.

Then something clicked in Mikeys brain. A quiet guy with glasses that would always be nicer on his worst days than Mikey would on his best, who were a mastermind when it came to handling angsty people like Pete because he just happened to work with them, who Pete for whatever reason were extremely affectionate towards, and whom had just happened to be around Pete yesterday when Mikey had left him, slightly disappointed, severely turned on and ready to fall in love.

“It’s your roommate, isn’t it?” Mikey asked before he could reach to think about whether that was a smart move or not. He just needed to know – after all, he was the one who’d started it.

“What? Patrick, he’s-“ Pete said before stopping himself. “How’d you know?”

Mikey huffed out a laugh without much joy to it, as Alicia silently caught onto what was happening and crawled over to where he was sitting and put both her arms around him.

“Sometimes you just see things coming, I guess,” Mikey mumbled with a bitter smile. “It was meant to be, or whatever.”

“I’m sorry,” Pete said, and he almost sounded honest about it.

“Yeah. Me too,” Mikey agreed before hanging up.

As he put down his phone, he sighed deeply and leaned into Alicias embrace, resting his head on her soft chest. It was nice to have someone around who wasn’t really in love. Mikey had been suspecting Alicia of agreeing to marry that guy for sole economic purposes, which was pretty smart from her side, since he was a pretty okay dude too.

“It wasn’t meant to be,” Mikey said, more to himself than to Alicia really.

“Stop that,” Alicia replied though, sounding slightly offended on his behalf. “There is _no_ such thing as ‘meant to be’ and soulmates, there’s not a preset for falling in love, _dude_.”

She rolled her eyes at his frown and continued, “There’s only the choices that we make, and the aftermaths of them – and love doesn’t come first, love comes later or maybe soon or maybe never. If you made some choices that involved this guy and he made some choices that didn’t involve you, then it’s not about that you weren’t ‘meant to be’. It’s about the fact that he didn’t value you as much as he should’ve – which sucks _balls,_ don’t get me wrong– but don’t take the blame off him. It was his choice.”

“You think?” Mikey asked. Her words was really a lot to take for his brain right now.

“Yeah. I do. That’s why I think love is so fucking difficult, because you need to coordinate your choices pretty precisely with someone else’s, and I don’t think it’s something that just gets wrapped up  nicely with a bow on top and handed to you – you need to work for it, give it your blood, sweat and tears and hope to God that the other person is willing to give that much as well.”

“So you don’t like, believe in a little guy with flimsy wings shooting arrows at people, making them fall in love?” Mikey said, accompanied by a small laugh to make it sound less insane.

“No,” Alicia shook her head and giggled, and her hair tickled Mikeys cheeks. “If there was, he’d have a hard time with all those awful choices that people make.”

“Yeah – you’re probably right,” Mikey smiled. He then leaned up and kissed the underside of her chin and accidentally kicked over a board game piece with his foot. It was okay though, he was losing anyways.


End file.
